Chapter 3. Poetry translation webs
seems, is into what was once the preserve of paper journals and newspapers: in
delivering reviews plus shorter sets of poems, some of which have appeared or
will be appearing in books. This highlights the often symbiotic relationship be-
tween web and paper, with web extracts and reviews both drawing on and point-
ing towards paper publications – a feature exploited by paper publishers’ and
journals’ websites.
The expanding number of web reviews is also giving increased feedback to
translators, which can be used in republications. Thus, when recently revising
Stone Sleeper for UK publication, I incorporated Telalović’s criticisms mentioned
earlier: I found her comments useful precisely because she was a source-culture
reader and therefore alert to the source poem’s ideological tone.
Though project teams tended to be geographically distributed, most poetry-
publishers and reviewers in the survey were North American. This is unsurprising:
most publishers (of paper publications, at least) are receptor-country-based, with
distribution networks which access receptor-language native readers, and most
English native readers are North American. Moreover, though readers world-wide
might be expected to review poetry translated into a globalized language, in prac-
tice most reviewers seem to be target-language literary writers – who also seem to
play a key role in web publishing. Hence the ability to form and exploit local net-
works with publishers and reviewers is also another reason why source poets in
target-country diaspora (here, North America) gain most translation publications
and reviews.
Interesting, however, is the relative prominence of Canadian publishers and
reviewers. Canada’s population is about a tenth that of the USA and less than half
that of the UK, for instance, but eleven projects were published in Canada, com-
pared to 33 in the USA and four in the UK. Various reasons may be suggested
here. One is support from networks of poets, publishers and subvention (a feature
of Canadian literary life indicated in the reviews), plus the willingness of diaspora
source-language poets to integrate into these networks (especially Goran Simić
and Saša Skenderija). Another is Simić’s and Skenderija’s publishing of poems on
their personal English-language websites.
In one sense, therefore, this bias reflects receptor-language dominance of po-
etry-translation publishing and reviewing, plus North American dominance of
English-language literary production. However, poetry translation teams tend to
be motivated by a strong allegiance to the source culture. Hence this bias also re-
flects how teams exploit receptor-culture publishing networks for source-culture
purposes: to present source poems, and often also the team’s image of the source
culture, to the maximum readership – one which is particularly large in a globally
dominant language like English (Casanova 2002/2010; Zauberga 2000).